The Old School Roast as Love Fest (A Really Mean Love Fest)

Just recently, I participated in a classic "roast" of my best friend in honor of his 40th birthday. It was his idea to assemble his closest friends to pulverize him with bracing insult. It was like nothing I had ever witnessed; in defiance of today's hypersensitive political correctness, we unleashed a confetti of ad hominem bile as a collective expression of love. We embraced him with searing malignancy. Then we literally embraced him, "hugging it out", as they say.

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You are likely unfamiliar with both the structure and logic of the roast, a ceremonial practice that dates back to the 1920's, when the iconic Friar's Club in NYC celebrated their members by honoring them with (or subjecting them to) an evening of withering (but well organized) criticism. The set-up is simple enough: the roastee's most intimate friends join him on a dais (in this case a really long conference table) and deliver short speeches, roughly 10 minutes a shot, coarsely deconstructing his character.

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There is an audience of even more friends who watch in open-mouthed horror, sometimes the target of impossibly vulgar slander as well. No one is spared, or, to put it another way, no one is excluded. The price of admission is exposure to public humiliation. At least one audience member wept, and not because she felt touched by endearing sentiment.

I learned a lot that astonishing evening. Most peoples' mothers are whores. No one has anatomically correct genitalia. Every relationship is marred by serial infidelity and, occasionally, beastiality. Fathers who we thought died from advanced age killed themselves out of disappointment at their progeny. Racism is alive and well.

I also learned how exhilarating it is to speak freely, unrestrained by the fear of giving offense. After years of teaching on college campuses, I'm all too familiar with the thin air of ready indignation, the stultifying effects of practiced self-censorship. Sometimes it's healthy, even cathartic, to tell someone their dead mother was a prostitute. It's a kind of rhetorical hygiene, cleaning out the suppressed resentment that builds within us like a dirty plaque. And maybe they didn't know that about their mother.

This may seem like a perverse way to demonstrate love, through unremitting criticism. But consider this: the inner logic of the roast is that underwriting personal attack is unbreakable trust and love. We can all weather such defamation because there is no suspicion it reflects true hostility—we are liberated from the strictures of politeness because we are so secure in the bonds of our friendship. Etiquette is for strangers. Candor is for soul mates.

Like any social experiment, the results are unpredictable. For many, the roast was a smoldering tinderbox of anxiety, the event itself as fundamentally ungovernable as the emotions it mischievously poked. Not everyone found it either moving or amusing to hear their insecurities publicly parsed. Some even felt deeply betrayed, as if a trust was broken rather than fortified by comic assault. In the aftermath, angry emails delivered feelings of bewilderment and recrimination. It should be noted no one complained about the open bar.

The split in opinion didn't follow gender lines: both men and women were delighted and disgusted. Both men and women shared with me how powerful a medium of fraternal affection they found the roast and both men and women interpreted the event as immature license for juvenile banter. One man was offended that he was described as K.D. Lang, but more effeminate. One woman laughed as a story was told that involved her dog and a jar of peanut butter. That story is almost certainly false.

Part of the punch of the event must have been the personal immediacy of facing such immoderate put downs—today, snark is either delivered anonymously or with electronic detachment via text, Facebook message, Twitter, or morse code if you're in the military. We prefer our criticism to be fired remotely like a long distance missile, and take refuge in the atonality of faceless sarcasm. Much of the electric dynamism of the old school roast is the live presence of the participants, their pulsing, or trembling, selves.

The word friendship has lost much of its force recently, now accepted as nonchalantly and promiscuously as one "likes" a professional sports team. The modern tendency is to build "networks" rather than cultivate soul mates. The intensity of the classic roast demands real commitment, a show of extraordinary trust, a leap of loving faith. It's not everyone who can hug a man who just questioned their sexuality in front of a gathering of dozens. But it's worth reflecting on why that's the case, and on what lies behind what we consider beyond the pale of comedy. I learned that the love I have of my most intimate friends transcends all offense. I also learned that I have an eating disorder and questionable taste in women. No matter what, it was an edifying night.

Ivan Kenneally is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York. His essays have appeared in periodicals like The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The Washington Times, The Jerusalem Post, and many others.